the first amendment just keeps shrinking in importance as a handful of cross the tearing corporations who don't care a lot about journalism don't care a lot about democracy has taken control well looks like having the most trusted name in news or being fair and balanced isn't enough cable networks cable news networks viewership is plummeting along with current events knowledge of the people who watch so where do americans turn to for their dearly dose of news will explore protecting the rights and civil liberties we don't usually give government. and that's really what these bills have done in a lot of ways but with the threat of cyber security cyber war looming overhead signing away civil liberties seems like just about the only logical solution to

america's problems are so lawmakers what have you think but do all of these internet bills really have our best interests in mind or is there something more sinister going on we'll explore. and watch your tail if you don't it's almost guaranteed someone else well new technology allows police officers to scan license plates on the go whether you are doing something illegal or not will give you a few good reasons why you should be alarmed about this license plate recognition technology. it's thursday may twenty fourth four pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wall and you're watching artsy. well it's been a rough month for the mainstream network c.n.n. has seen its ratings plummet. to its lowest point in fifteen years and if you

compare the network's viewership this year to last year they've lost half of their viewers and it's not just c.n.n. that's feeling the pain a new survey proves to be an embarrassment for fox here it is when it came to international issues fox viewers scored the lowest when it comes to knowledge of current events other their viewers are less informed than those that watch other networks comedy news the daily show and even americans that watch no news at all and when it comes to domestic issues fox viewers were no better off once again scoring the lowest when asked questions about what's happening right here at home interesting for a station that consistently takes the top spot for viewership ratings so what's going on here where viewers turning to instead and could alternative news be giving the mainstream a run for their money or to correspondent marina pour in iowa explores. believe me

i'm a boy he's the most trusted fictional name in news the lead character of h.b.o.'s upcoming series newsroom is on a mission to tell the truth in the face of u.s. corporate and commercial pressures where you are what makes the greatest country in the world i don't know what i'm. venting their lives and their work in the rules of nonfiction taking morgan holding its annual shareholders meeting america's corporate owned news networks that rarely challenge the status quo might want to take some cues from h.b.o.'s fake and i reporter warns last month cnn's ravings dropped to their lowest in a decade here are the nominees in march fox lost nearly twenty percent of their viewers and for years and as n.b.c. has consistently remained least popular among all three if you went into the board rooms in the executive suites of these media companies they're in a panic about this. other peter hart is the activism director at fair

a us media watchdog group he says an increasing number of americans are abandoning mainstream media for alternative independent or foreign news outlets once people shift and say c.n.n. is not for me fox is not for me on this and b c is doing what i really want them to do i need them to do that it's hard to get them back how do you convince somebody that your media system works when their experience tells them that it doesn't when last autumn is biggest global story was born in new york city it was largely ignored by most mainstream news outlets but it is. this organized they look for there is one of the protesting nobody seems to know until it became impossible to suppress. this spring the fight against corporate greed is still being waged but at this event in times square demonstrators are surrounded by news tickers but no mainstream t.v.

. amaryllis the occupy movement is it waiting for the almighty powerful networks to show up and reports about their demonstrations instead the grassroots group has made a media distribution all part of its campaign reading newspapers like this one with support about political financial and social stories that are either blocked out more rarely addressed by most mainstream news outlets in the us how a dozen conglomerates currently controlled mainstream media. critics say this leaves just a few companies capable of strangling the voice of america's free press the first amendment just keep shrinking it in for. a handful of profiteering corporations who don't care a lot about journalism don't care a lot about democracy have taken control reporting the truth means risking all the dangers of digging too deep cost america's legendary newsman dan rather his coveted chair at c.b.s.

the trust the journalist was forced to resign after reporting that george w. bush went missing during his national guard service to avoid being drafted to vietnam. because i had my team reporting the true story was a tough story a story lot of people didn't want to believe it was subjected to but to repeat propaganda barrage to just put it to a case in which our imitating life is becoming. a life now seeing more americans turning to the alternative and this comes less than them saying no to this if you were in a port ny r.t. new york and it's. the talk more about what's behind the slump and ratings for the mainstream networks sam seeder host of the majority report joins us now sam welcome so who is first want to talk about this survey that just came out it shows that viewers that watch fox are less informed than people that don't watch any news at all but fox is so profitable so what's going on. well there are

there's a group of americans maybe two million three million a day who are really interested in living in a delusion that in some respects i mean it's pretty stunning where watching the news makes you less informed that's pretty shocking but i think these people are listening to what they want to hear and i think that's indicative of of a bigger problem that we have with with network news in general and what is that problem do you think that it has to do with the fact that media is now more driven by business than by journalism. i mean i think that's always been a problem to some extent but i'll tell you what the real problem i think at the end of the day is that i mean you have these movements you have the occupy movement even to a certain extent without outside the occupy movement there are other populist movements that have a real problem with money in politics well just this week the f.c.c.

was sued by the major networks because the f.c.c. is now going to require major networks to post on line these are records they already have to keep post on line how much political advertising where their revenue comes from in terms of political ads and so i mean just contemplate this for a moment the networks don't there's no cost to them involved in this of course they're already keeping the records except for they're in some file cabinet down at their at their headquarters they don't want it online because if they were to show the american public the american public had access easy access to these figures they would realize that all these hundreds of millions of dollars these billions of dollars that are going to be spent on these elections coming up in november the vast majority of that money actually ends up in the in the coffers of broadcasting networks and so how can you rely on them to report the primary story that we have in this country of wealth inequality and of politics of money being corrupted by

politics when unfair. they're the largest beneficiaries of so saying would you say in some instances that the media could be doing a disservice to the public well of course because you know when when when your average viewer dips into whether it's cable news or even network news they assume that the network doesn't have these other all tyria agendas they assume that they're getting the most important news of the day and so as it becomes dumbed down as certain issues become taboo. the viewer just becomes frankly stupider and less less knowledgeable about the real important issues that are affecting their lives on a daily basis but they're not capable of making that connection because the networks and the cable outlets leave a huge portion of that out and beyond fox c.n.n. has also particularly has had

a pretty bad month and they are the pioneer of this twenty four hour network a model and they are suffering the most what do you think is behind that. well i mean i think if you look at this network news i mean here is it really becomes an element of laziness and groupthink you know the producers at all of these cable networks to a large extent in some obviously. not so much but they they're chasing each other and so the stories become stale they don't really dig things the the sticks by which they're measured are really just their own their competitors but across the board c.n.n. is not the only one that's down all the cable news to a certain extent is down in and part of it i think is because on some level the audiences are realizing that none of this is terribly relevant to them you've got to do your party candidates who are are backed by in many respects the same money

and the same interests and i think the audience is is turning off those networks that are just basically telling him. that there's something that's going to affect their lives here when when i think people are getting more and more a sense that this very well may not affect my life and sam it's not just t.v. looks like newspapers are in trouble as well many newspapers are going down under and the latest victim is in new orleans today of the new orleans you see it there then the new orleans times spec announce that they will add its daily publication and this paper has been around for one hundred and seventy five years and now new orleans will be the biggest city in the u.s. without a daily paper or so it's not just t.v. and it's newspapers as well well i mean i think you know it's the reason why newspapers are suffering in particularly locally owned newspapers are suffering i

think has more to do with technology frankly than it than it does with a sense that they don't have the readership or the interest in the local news i mean. i think you know simultaneous to. two all that's happening from a political standpoint is this technological revolution and people are getting their news in different ways whether it's you know podcasting or whether it's reading blogs online or. other forms of media and i think you know newspapers that didn't see this coming and they didn't have the capital to make these changes quick enough i think are falling by the wayside and i think when it comes to local papers that's a huge loss for for you know citizens frankly and certainly they're seeing that over new orleans today sam do you think this signifies a shift and where people are turning to for the news these days well i think to a certain extent i mean you know you can look across the board let's like yours

numbers are up and on you tube and. pod casts and alternate forms of media blogs now we're starting to see actually advertising head to those type of outlets because i think that's where where people are going and you know there's. people do it i think in those outlets for different reasons within the corporate media empire because you know you don't you don't really have the same incentive structure there and so i think the quality of the work is different and sometimes it's better sometimes it's worse but i think the genders behind the work are more explicit and and i think people can find what they're looking for is without this sense of there's another stakeholder that is sitting down on the couch next to me as i watch this except i just don't know who that stakeholder is and perhaps people are realizing this and that's why it is such

a bad time now for the networks sam what do you think they need to change in order to reverse that trend that we're seeing right now. oh wow i mean to the extent that they're capable of trick changing i mean look you know there's an inherent problem when you you have the notion the national association of broadcasters and all that they represent are attempting to to hide the fact that they are one of the biggest beneficiaries of the enormous amount of money that's flooding our politics i mean that is such a central problem that we have in this country. i don't know how you overcome that i mean i think they can perhaps make their news more relevant in some respects and i think they can they can attempt to incentivize the people who work for them to to find stories that aren't being covered elsewhere but meanwhile you know they're driven by the same corporate concerns that is we have to cut expenses and increase

profits and the only way they can cut expenses is by by cutting down on the one thing that they offer as opposed to you know an outlet like mine which is they had international reporting and they had reporters in every state in the country and and now those are the first things that go so at the end of the day you going to listen to an opinion network that you know is owned by a weapons manufacturer or is owned by a big player who is fighting net neutrality or one that is it has other political agendas that are not explicit or you going to listen to a smaller outlet that can deliver just as well reasoned opinion but at the end of the day you know that that person is expressing an opinion that has nothing to do with having to kowtow to their corporate overlords and so i'm not sure there is much they can do right sam interesting and thank you very much for coming on the show that was sam seeder house majority part. well it seems the

face of terrorism is evolving a poll shows that these days americans are more worried about cyber terrorism than actual terrorism and we're seeing the response of this fear it came in the form of a controversial piece of legislation that is aimed at expanding the government's power to monitor the internet so this has passed the house and awaits a vote in the senate after congress's recess next week so are fears over cyber terrorism justified or is it a result of fear mongering r.t. correspondent abbie martin reports. according to u.s. officials it's the looming threat facing our nation today but you won't be able to see it hear it or feel it coming because it will be in cyberspace in today's world acts of terror could come not only from a few extremists in suicide vests but from a few keystrokes on the computer

a weapon of mass disruption it's cyber terrorism and the fear is being ramped up by the day in the not too distant future we anticipate that the cyber threat will pose the number one threat to our country is not a matter of if but when a cyber pearl harbor will occur it's so pervasive that there's even an entire exhibit dedicated to it at the washington d.c. museum a museum whose executive director spent thirty six years at the cia there will come a time when it will be within our lifetime it'll probably be relatively soon when there will be probably a major cyber terrorist attack. the strike could come from enemies abroad we know we have reason to cyber weapons wreaking havoc they warn we are a massive cyber. threat who is in this country and the hype is working in a new poll shows that americans are now more worried about cyber terrorism than

actual terrorism government officials also point the finger at hacktivists. like the leaderless group of anonymous who have been calling for civil unrest in the u.s. we are calling upon the citizens of the united states to physically protest warning that the group may launch cyber attacks on infrastructure the scale of such a possible attack is mostly unknown to combat the threat congress is pushing through legislation most recently cispa or the cyber intelligence sharing and protection act it would increase surveillance by allowing corporations to give confidential user data to the federal government but critics warn these bills are paid in the way for government abuse when it comes to protecting our civil rights and civil liberties we don't usually give government blank check and that's really what these bills have done in a lot of ways these laws could also be used to capitalize off the threat of cyber terrorism by impeding net neutrality what could be a competitive threat it could be something that we wouldn't really you and i describe as a stivers a curate a threat but really just a threat to their current bottom line or their business sense has already passed

the house and is awaiting a senate vote one thing is clear the government will continue its attempt to control the internet and the blanket threat of cyber terrorism may be the perfect way to convince the people to give up their rights to privacy on the net once and for all abby martin artsy washington. well if you feel like you can't go anywhere without being watched these days brace yourself for this it's a license plate recognition device police can slap these things on their cars capture the license plate of each and every car that passes by and collect a treasure trove of information on drivers and they're being used in california and texas now other states are pushing for them now proponents of this say it can come in handy in catching criminals but privacy advocates say and they're saying wait a minute what is the government doing with this information and just how far can this go talk about this news managing editor for reason twenty four seven news j.d. to chile joins us now live from arizona

a state where law enforcement is pushing to get ahold of the device is welcome to the show there. so this gadget doesn't make us safer or isn't it an invasion of privacy well lou promising to make this for they always do whatever they can you know put this tech on the road or introduced into our lives but of course it can invade our privacy anything that tracks with the promise of stopping crime trucks us it could be used for any purposes that they want to put that information to this particular device tracks or license plates and knows where we're going when we've been there they can simply can track are patterns of travel we can track who we travel with. so yes can that be used to stop crime you know theoretically the da is behind the current push to put these cameras into utah so they say they can track a judgment was and they could they can you can also track this going to the store going political meetings going to see or you know girl friends going to see who are

promoting and so they're collecting all this information some of it seems trivial what can they possibly do with this information that they have stored. well among the uses they put it so in areas that are pretty highly saturated with these cameras for instance friends of the washington d.c. area they talk about going to nightclubs and having these cameras out there that can spot license plate long into conflicting gangs and their police and the saying . you know it's you know mediate between the gangs make sure there's not committed a problem this is a great use and actually you know they probably can or me at least potentially can stop violence in this way but if they know who are gang members because you already have to track these people in order to know that you have cars from competing gangs there they also could know that you've got people from wire who political groups there you know if they're tracking people by gang affiliation they also struck them by party affiliation there really isn't a limit on this any of this information they can be used for good purposes to stop

violence to recover stolen property can also be used to figure out who's going where who's voting for watch who's supporting who to what extent is this technology used today. where or what police departments actually use that about a third of big police departments it's usually qualified as being about one hundred police officers or more throughout the u.s. and these things actually are is about two years ago it was thirty seven percent i'm assuming the figure is gone up since then and not down in the d.c. area civilly saturated by these cameras some other urban areas i think the l.a. area the california highway patrol have these the offense use them along the border in trouble for them and texas let's talk about putting a man on a federal level in utah and arizona but a lot of police departments have these on a more or less ad hoc basis don't talk about it don't have policies in place to monitor how the information is used so it's really kind of hard to know exactly what is being done with this information and would you say that there's

a push to get them more widespread far more police to get a hold of these things. oh absolutely the put the cops love these things i mean anything that promises to make their jobs easier they look putting a camera in place is not what a police officer employs they can trip a police officer or something else there's things are automated super cop sees a license plate is going to put the numbers in manual or these cameras capture them scan them automatically and put them in a database someplace else and then i don't and i'm not surprised the police agencies like these things so there is definitely push to put these letters now so police officers and proponents of this are going to say hey we could use this technology to catch criminals to catch if a kid goes missing try to track down a kidnapper or you know somebody that could be pose a danger to society is so if you look at that argument could it be a good investment well i mean in terms of stopping crime to make all of our houses out or go i guess they can see through them probably something most of violence did

right there would give up a lot in the process and these tools that they bring along can be used to stop crime and there probably are good outlook asians and i think i'm sure there are good up of fictions recovering stolen cars when the big things they talk about apparently simply driving through some mall parking lots they found the stolen cars and stolen license plates just like that but there's a turtle bit when you scan license plates you don't have hundreds of people's travel you know where they're going who want to go in there and that can be used and be it would especially if you put watches on certain license plates somebody you want to know more about it's pretty easy to go out into their lives just. by following with a drug that is there any proof that this technology can actually be prevent effective in preventing crime. there doesn't seem to be any of the studies i've seen say that in terms of recovering stolen property and really automobiles there is some indication of effectiveness but they don't seem to deter which is the big

thing they've looked at so far they certainly don't seem to get search drug smuggling they don't seem to deter crime list is no evidence to that effect yet then they come down the pike the fact is these cameras are being put in place without any kind of conclusive evidence that they do anything to deter crime they don't lower the crime rate whether it's violent crime or property and it sounds like not only is there a lack of evidence but citizens don't know when these things are being implemented in their police force you know there's no real public discussion of this i mean it's usually a see a line item of you know about them purchasing one of these but how many people actually know what license plate recognition means if they even bother to look at a budget for police departments very few people do and there certainly is no discussion in most jurisdictions of parents of policies that have the information is going to be used and where the cameras in the place and most importantly actually keep placement exam secret all right and lastly for those that are here this center outraged over and like hey i don't want this but i don't want police being able to track my whereabouts at any moment at any time

a concerned citizen do about this or can they do anything. well the first thing to push for is the question of whether these cameras are actually needed explicitly so much when it's one of dollars each that's the figure i've seen on each installation so the department wants to spend you want to know if it's going to be effective simply asking the question and making them answer it is a good place to start and then push for policies to control the use of the information influence what do you do with this mission how well the stories are you ever going to delete it because otherwise they can develop years with moderns on simply how you live your life it seems like at least some regulation is needed or that you know people start at least know what the power and the technology that are being used on them j.d. thank you for coming on the show that was j.d. to cheli he is the news managing editor for reason twenty four seven news. well the capital account is up next on our t.v. let's check in with lauren lister to see what's on today's agenda lauren what you

have going on over there hi liz eyes are focused again on europe because policymakers if you can believe it held their eight teens meeting to discuss the crisis their lives do you want to take a guess at what they came up with to solve it i couldn't take a guess right now to be honest with you well that's a pretty good one because they came up with nothing now everybody parses this and says what are they going to do what should they do what are they not doing we're going to ask what if they do nothing net net policymakers have screwed up enough so that's the question i'm going to pose to our guest edward harrison today he's the author of credit write downs dot com and i don't think he's going to groove me there but i'm going to press him liz and i think people want to see it look forward to watching that and that is coming next on the capital account with lauren lister lauren thank you but that's going to do it now for the news for more on the stories we covered you can check out our you tube channel that is youtube dot com slash r.t. america or check out our website it's r t dot com slash usa you can also follow me

on twitter liz wall we'll be right back here and a half hour. wealthy british scientists are. not on the side of the free. market why not come to find out what's really happening to the global economy with max cons or for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into cars a report on our.

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